Description: Meeting up with the moody fighter after his rough battle with Bison, Shurui and K' have something close to a heart to heart: at least, whatever the closest equivalent would be for two disgruntled teenage amnesic clones who don't know much about each other, much less themselves. In the end, what the two learn is some of what makes them strikingly similiar, as well as what sets them apart.
The YFCC is quiet now. It's been a scant hour since the conclusion of the violent encounter between Mike Bison and K' which transpired within the very lobby of the center. The damage to the entryway of the building is, all things considered, relatively minimal compared to what it -could- have been: a crater in one of the walls, blackened marks scorched into the floor which record the pattern of K''s movements... liberal splatterings of blood. The smallest children have been kept away from the site for the sake of their young eyes and nerves; the older ones are still milling about a bit in the erstwhile warzone, quiet and still a little shell-shocked, taking care of those who'd gotten hurt.
K'? He hadn't bothered to linger. The very few who -did- attempt to approach him, whether to timidly ask if he was all right, to thank him, or to try to compliment him, were quickly and simply shrugged off. After a while, people got the hint, and generally just let him alone so he could get patched up and move on with his life.
It's these events which have led up to K''s current presence in the YFCC infirmary, sitting moodily on the edge of a bed as the subdued staff work. He would normally have avoided coming here-- he despises doctors, needles, and medical procedures in general, if only because it all reminds him of the sterility and scientific focus of NESTS-- but the unmistakable sensation of a couple fractured ribs had forced him to. Such an injury doesn't usually need setting, but it does need reinforcement to heal both quickly and correctly. And K' hates being out of commission any longer than he has to be.
He had already removed his jacket and shirt of his own volition, over the protests of the volunteers who felt he shouldn't be moving his arms and disrupting his injuries. He silenced the objections quickly, making it clear he would not suffer anyone to touch him more than was necessary; accordingly they let him do what he wanted. They'd quickly bound his chest loosely with white bandages, taping it to reduce the pain, and then they'd let him alone to do as he would. He seemed familiar enough with this kind of injury that he should know what to do and what not to do.
The scorch marks and smell of blood assault Shurui's nostrils as she arrived late at the scene, panting from a long run from Gedo to the YFCC. "....."
It seems that K's fiery aura isn't just an aura. The room reads like a book, even to Shurui's weak eyes, and, when her glasses come off, she's assaulted by the auras of the children present, whose injuries, while vague, present an empathic portrait that's nearly painful for Shurui to look at. Glasses mute the painful noise for now, but, for once, the girl can't help but feel shakey.
They had no chance, against someone like that. Thankfully, K' did.
By the time Shurui reaches K', he's already being bandaged by the staff. Standing against a wall, strange prickles of worry going up and down her neck, Shurui tries to keep her eyes off the gaggle of attendants pushing and prodding bloody ribs into place, coaxing the body to heal itself correctly. She's concerned. But not because he's a close friend, or even someone she could safely call an anquaintance. What *would* she call K'?
'You should give him another chance.' Alma said that, as if no one had really done so before. A possible friend, she'll call him. Someone whom seems to have an odd resonance on key points that no one has before. Someone who, despite not giving a damn, still drew viciously drew blood. Maybe he did it because he wanted to fight someone? Perhaps. There's only one way to know for sure, and that's.... to do your homework, as K' said himself.
During a lull in the painful bandaging process, Shurui speaks up. "I can watch over him, if you like. Make sure he's not gonna come back here because his wounds ripped back open, right?" The brown eyes behind those glasses are analytical, and, for once, not marked by genuine boredom.
K' is quiet. He evinces no sign that he's even noticed that Shurui has arrived. His downcast eyes stay half-lidded, right on the verge of drifting shut; his demeanor reeks of indifference not only to his own condition, but to the attendants who fuss over his bruised torso. Some of the older, more motherly volunteers, cluck-- largely to themselves, since K' isn't really listening-- worriedly as they work: what would we have done if you hadn't been here, thank goodness you drove that man off, just think how many children might have been hurt or killed! K''s expression remains unchanging: he, quite frankly, no longer cares.
Being removed from the situation in question does wonders for helping him forget about its specifics. In particular, the troubling way he felt so enraged over something which honestly should neither faze nor surprise him: the abuse of children.
He's not thinking about it much anymore. He can brood about that later. For now he focuses on the pain in his chest-- and, eventually, on Shurui. He doesn't look at her, but he knows she's there; he knew the minute she walked in. He doesn't acknowledge her in the least until she speaks up; whereupon, with a smooth, unsurprised abruptness that gives away he's been aware of her all this time, he retaliates with a wry, rasping word, one demanding in its shortness: "Why?"
He lets the word hang in the air a bit. The immediate followup phrase he'd been planning to fire off at her gets swallowed instead when a stab of pain interrupts his train of thought; K' remains mercifully silent a few seconds more. Jaw gritting, K' finally looks around at Shurui, eyes narrowing on the girl. "I don't need supervision..." Another long pause. "...What the hell are you doing here?"
Children seem to be these strange creatures to her; perhaps, when she entered the street, she *was* a child, but, now, it's evident that she may never know whether she was twelve, or, perhaps, a fourteen year old.
She doesn't answer, at first, to that first 'why'. In fact, she seems willing to let it hang in the air while the pain in K's chest subsides. "I don't think those nurses will let you leave until they're satisfied with you," Shurui finally answers. "If you rest in one of the other rooms, you'll be back on your feet. It's not to supervise *you* specifically, but to make sure no kids jump on you or something."
It's not as if Shurui's a psychic. The disgust at the surroundings around him seems to be written on the male clone's actions and manner.
Why is she here? Eyes look to the side as the girl shrugs. "..." The truth would probably agitate him. 'I was worried'. Worried about who? A person she can't call a friend. Maybe never will. But, alongside that, K' is... Shoving her hands into her pockets, Shurui glares. "I'm here because I want to be."
K' gives Shurui the hard, quick onceover of somebody experienced at making an assessment in a single glance. She's hiding something, but he can't be arsed to figure out what. With a dismissive sound, he looks away again. The attendants, having finished their ministrations, give him some last minute warnings, instructions, and admonishments about what he should and should not do; mostly perfunctorily, since they can tell from his carriage that he's infinitely familiar with dealing with this kind of injury. Eventually they disperse, leaving Shurui alone with her disgruntled, rather unpleasant company.
And when the girl finally opts to reply? A bark of laughter starts up out of his wounded chest at her words, the broken sound a little wetter and more erratic than it should be. It soon devolves into a series of coughs, and K' lets his head dip, shaking it in some private amusement. One hand lifts in a dismissive flick. "You don't have to worry about that." K' draws a couple breaths, letting himself settle a bit, before he continues. "Most of the kids were already scared about coming near me. What they saw just now probably didn't help."
There is no bitter tone to his voice-- no sound of regret for that fact. In fact, it seems to hold more perverse amusement for him than it does any semblance of bitterness or desire that things be different. K', as always, will carry on doing his own thing; he'll continue doing what he wants to do. However other people choose to react to who he is is their business. K' doesn't give a damn.
He's quiet a few moments longer. Shurui's glare just seems to glance off him, the young man as unresponsive as ever. Finally he just tilts a yellow eye at her, his gaze considering and shrewd in the way a hawk watches an open field. That amusement persists-- even intensifies. For whatever reason, her adoption of a disaffected demeanor seems to divert him-- for now. "You've got some fucked-up taste in pastimes." His eyes half-shutter, the lowering of lids finally shadowing away that amusement. "...You do your homework?"
Shurui *is* hiding something. But it's not the shifty gaze of someone hiding a tranquilizer gun; rather.... something that K' may or may not prefer. "... Yeah," Shurui finally relents, called upon her bluff. Then, "I don't care why you did jumped in there like you did. But I'm glad you did." Quickly, she changes the subject with a grump of a frown on her face, "You going to need a water bottle or something? You might as well take advantage of the fact that I'm here."
When that eye considers her, hawk-like and sharp, Shurui feels it rather than sees it, much like anyone once in the face of such a keen gaze. Finally, his words. 'You've got some fucked-up taste in pastimes.'
Her reply is nearly instant. "... You got any ideas for better ones?" The girl shrugs. "I'm all ears." Maybe she *is* messed up. However, Shurui is beyond any notion of caring about appearances, beyond her loyal obligations to Muda's memory.
Her homework? Oh yeah. That homework. "Yeah. I did." A pause, and Shurui's head slowly cranks itself to face K' with a curious, if rather lopsided, frown on her face. "K'," she starts, now saying the young man's name, "your boss is fucked up." Mission accomplished, it seems. And then some. "Or, well, fucked up in a 'happy smily' way."
K' doesn't reply for a while. He stares off into a corner of the infirmary, not meeting her gaze or even seeming to see the object upon which his eyes rest. It's obvious there are some troubled thoughts taking place beneath that listless, unresponsive exterior, but whatever they are K' does not seem up to sharing them. Eventually he just shrugs once, emits a scornful scoff, and shakes his head. "It's my job to. Why the hell else do you think I'm here..."
But for all his crankiness, he won't say no to her offer to get him a drink. He'd -considered- saying no, or just ignoring the question-- he doesn't like letting people do for him what he could just do himself-- but in the end, thirst wins out in the immediate moment. His head tilts in a short, wordless affirmative. It's like she said-- might as well use her while she's here and willing.
Her other question is a little harder to answer. K' doesn't even make a show of trying to. "If I had any good ideas about ways to pass the time," he shrugs, briefly sharing with the girl a glance about as grumpily standoffish as hers, "I wouldn't be here. Would I." Watching two surly teenagers try to hold a conversation really is the most 'special' kind of entertainment there is. There's little actually -hostile- about their intentions-- but their word choice and their tone make them look like they're on the verge of a fight to any outside onlooker.
Ironically, it's mention of Alma that gets K' to be just a little more verbose. If not necessarily in a gushing sort of way. "...tcheh. So you went and asked him." K' lets out a derisive sort of scoff, calmly starting to fold up his blood-spattered black shirt in his lap. A flicker of amusement enters his eyes as she tries to amend her words. "--No. He's just plain fucked up," he corrects instantly. "He give you the usual wistful crap?"
At first, Shurui is silent to K''s reply, instead acting upon that affirmative motion of K's head. Turning on a heel, she's already off, disappearing behind a corner as she goes off in search of that soda machine she saw earlier. While her eyesight's bad, a keen memory makes up for it when it chooses to. When she returns barely a minute later, Shurui hands out the cold bottle to K'....
.... and waits until he finishes that first drink before speaking. Don't want their surly conversation to make him choke on water, after all.
".... I told you. I don't care about your reasoning. You could have done it because you liked beating up people and I'd still be glad as hell because the end result is the same. Kids.... well.... not everyone has the benefit of a childhood. Why screw it up for those that do?" She pauses, almost seeming to visibly gaffing at the awkward wording of that statement. "Just forget about it."
Sometimes, it's not what's on the surface that counts, especially here. Despite K' being as delightful to talk to as chewing sandpaper, there's something about him that makes the girl feel.... relaxed? No, that's not it. A certain resonance? No. What could she have in common with him?
Something. That something that made her apologize when they first met.
Alma seemed to sense something too, but Shurui was too busy to even consider until now. Did he tell her to give the man another chance just out of his usual sympathy? Or did he see something she couldn't? He read her aura, after all. ..... For someone with no ill intentions, the man's thinking seems just as twisted and strategical. .... Or is that just her? "Yeah, he did. So he does that to everyone?"
Maybe it is just her. ".... It was....." There's a troubled look on her face. "He seemed to know exactly whatever the hell that thing I do was. The whole 'looking at people's body energies' thing."
K' accepts the bottle without looking-- without even an indication of thanks, other than a certain protracted silence that could, with some imagination, be construed as grudging gratitude by dint of its very permissive nature. He fumbles his first attempt to open the thing, as he stubbornly tries to do it with his hobbled right hand rather than using his far more dextrous left; he doesn't make another attempt. That heavy glove just tightens around the cap, frustration clear in the tautening of his fingers and the severe line of his brows, before K' just rips the thing clear off with an abrupt, crushing close of that metal-sheathed hand and a slight twist.
Nothing force couldn't solve. His temper obviously roused by the entire transaction-- by the reminder of how that glove restricts him-- K' just broods there a moment in silence. Shurui's further words on the topic of kids and childhood, words that mirror his own haphazard, fragmented thoughts on why he feels as he does, just add a dose of bitterness to his demeanor, slumping his shoulders further. He retreats into himself a moment, and fails to speak for some time.
"Don't know why I put myself out there so people can have what I didn't." It's a low, rough complaint more than anything else, a rhetorical grumbling that slings a halfhearted venom at the children of whom he's so jealous. "Doesn't make sense." All he wants is his past and his vengeance. He doesn't know how -this-, this center, these -kids- came into the picture. And he can't make heads or tails of it.
His solution? It's not to think about it at all. Shoving it out of his mind-- for the moment-- he takes a long, aggressive drink, his movements more... abrupt than strictly necessary. Exhaling a long, frustrated breath afterwards, he leans forward in a slump, letting his elbows come to rest on his knees. His head dips, hair drifting down across his brow; his left hand rubs tiredly across his face. He looks spent, and not from the fight or his injury. From something more intangible.
"He likes poking into things," is K''s acerbic opinion on Alma, "but his bullshit's sincere. Go talk to him more, if he seemed that helpful." K' doesn't bother straightening up, or even looking at Shurui, to talk to her. "Not like -I've- got any answers."
Shurui's tempted to offer. Hell, she's tempted to laugh. However, one does *not* laugh at a man who just turned a whole room into a mess of blood and melted tile. Even in this state, Shurui is certain the young man could seriously hurt her. Maybe, even kill her.
And yet, she doesn't budge.
Shurui is quiet a long time, her gaze peering those those rose-tinted glasses back at K'. She wants to shoot something back at him, say something to the effect of 'at least you remember yours', but, looking at the downcast clone, she can't help but think it'd just add insult to injury. "Maybe because you know the value of it." The weight of those words seem to make her honest attempt to be casual seem almost... surreal. ".... A decent childhood, that is. I don't even remember mine. It's stupid, I know, but, that's just the way life is. If my real parents took this long to find me, I'll stick with my old man, even if he's dead now." She lets out a long sigh. "I'll take what I can get, even if no one else sees the value in it."
Perhaps, it's a good thing that Shurui is convinced her condition is something rational; else she would have hidden it so tightly. While cries of 'you're lying' tended to follow, it was never a matter of conversation in the first place. That is, unless the person she talked to...
.... somehow seemed to have an odd understanding, whether through empathy or closeness. There's never better the latter, but the former... maybe that's here?
She continues. "Yeah, I know. He's so sincere even I could see it in his aura. I'm not a mind-reader, but when something is too obvious, it shows. Like, the fire in your aura." Looking at the oddly tired K', she adds, "I'm not asking you for any."
Had Shurui offered, K' would have snapped at her. If she'd -laughed-... even despite his condition, K' would probably have expressed his considerable displeasure quite directly. Which would have been a pretty bad thing. He wouldn't -kill- Shurui, or hurt her (too much)-- he's not that bad-- but he'd probably make quite manifest the fact that, even in this injured state, he -could-. NESTS spent a lot of money and effort building him to kill-- to prey on his fellow human-- and when sufficiently angered he tends to have trouble adhering to the concept of 'holding back.' He's found that making that last part quite clear tends to intimidate pretty well.
It seems that for every virtue one uncovers about him, one finds something ugly to balance it out. K' might have a protective streak in him, but at the same time, he likes getting things his way... and likes to scare people into submission to get that compliance. You try being thought of as an object for all your life-- you try being totally subservient to the whim of something that considers you a failed thing. See if you don't have behaviorial issues then.
Unprovoked, left alone, K' manifests none of that potential nastiness. He just kind of sits through her hesitantly casual words. Yeah, he knows the value of it. It kills him when he sees it taken for granted. It makes him want to--
Shurui mentions not remembering her past. K' looks up.
His subdued aura, burnt down to mere cinder and smoldering flickers, abruptly intensifies. K' turns his eyes and nails a hard stare to Shurui, his gaze as intense as the fire now winding a brilliant path throughout his entire lean frame. His sudden interest is painfully obvious. "...You don't have your memories? Why?"
It's probably nothing. Amnesia isn't just a NESTS thing, after all. But still...
A virtue, combatted with something ugly. Like fire. Fire can warm cold hands, refine metal, combat against the cold. It can also raze a building without a single thought, and has no conscience to determine who gets spared and who doesn't.
K' isn't the first to have a 'fiery' aura in Shurui's eyes, but he is the first to have it be so literal. Also, he's the first to make her glasses seem useless right now, as her sense can't help but zero in on that intense presence that seemingly came out of nowhere, much like Alma's own. Shurui's casual posture warps into one seemingly as exhausted as his own just now was.
"...." No one's ever asked *why*. And no one's ever phrased it that way before. ".... To tell you the truth...."
Shurui says that because, right now, the truth's the only thing that would suffice to such a question. "I don't know. I just.... woke up in an alleyway one day. I couldn't see well, no one knew me, and no one really cared. Lived like that for about a year, I think... When someone decided to care years later, the man who gave me my name, he couldn't find anything about it. It's like I never existed since that day. After a while, I just..."
.... Assumed it was something normal.
She straightens; a light shrug nudges her shoulders into action. "You can choose whether or not to believe me; I stopped caring about that a long time ago. It's not worth it."
[OOC] Stasya says, "k''s next move: hey i'm totally missing memories too!! :]"
[OOC] Shurui says, "ahahahahaha"
[OOC] Stasya says, "except without the emoticon"
[OOC] Shurui says, "......... DO IT WITH THE EMOTICON"
[OOC] Shurui says, "or not"
[OOC] Stasya no
[OOC] Shurui says, "just the idea of K' going :] is disturbing"
[OOC] Shurui says, "Hell, it's more disturbing that K' going :)"
[OOC] Stasya says, "yeah :) is at least somewhat normal"
[OOC] Stasya says, ":] is like number muncher hapy"
[OOC] Stasya says, "happy even"
[OOC] Shurui says, "Exactly. Like, maybe, it'd be one of those rare thi- YES"
[OOC] Shurui says, "K:] "I GOTS BARBEQUE""
[OOC] Shurui says, "K:] never had a chance- NESTS just tossed him in a pit of acid and cried"
[OOC] Stasya dies
[OOC] Stasya just dies. NESTS C_C 'that k isn't threatening or cool at all!!'
[OOC] Shurui says, "Igniz: MOR KYO CLONES PLZ"
K' listens in silence as Shurui explains herself. There is little in the way of empathy or shock in his reaction-- but then, who would expect such emotions to ever appear on K''s face? For a while, it's up in the air what he thinks of her moment of openness. It's even up in the air as to whether he believes her at all. He certainly isn't giving her any indication either way, merely regarding her with a thoughtful sort of intensity.
Eventually, he lifts a shoulder in a shrug. His gaze turns back forwards. "I'd be the last person not to believe you," he finally replies irritably-- as if she had affronted him by suggesting he wouldn't. "I don't remember anything of my life before I was sixteen. Like you said. I just woke up."
He fails to elaborate further. To go into it in more detail would be to talk about the specifics of NESTS, and he's not given to discussing that with relative strangers. Being raised as some kind of Kusanagi-imbued weapon is an even harder story to get anyone to believe, and beyond that he's not interested in involving people in his business any more than he has to.
"I guess then you'd understand why I don't give a shit about the name I give out." K' drifts his eyes closed, looking largely indifferent to the bleak words he's saying. He got used to feeling this way a long time ago. "It means nothing to me." And it's all he's got.
The irritable tone in K's voice grants him a similiar tone in Shurui's own. "Oh, don't give me that tone. I just....." Shurui is silent then, pressing a hand through grey hair. "... I mean, I guess it happens. But.... you..." Her voice drifts off, hearing K's words. ".... You're.... like me." The look on the girl's face is confused, but she doesn't seem to be at all disgusted by this fact. Quite the opposite; there's something verified in K's words, something she may have hoped for, deep down.
"Not exactly like me, but.... like me in all the ways I was different from everyone else. But...." The gthosts of a million questions swim over her face just then. All those nasty hows and whys that K' can't neccessarily give out, for various reasons.
Instead of asking them, she abides by that vague promise she made to him. ".... I think I was twelve. Or fourteen. I don't know. I look like a kid, so..." She shrugs. "Maybe I was a kid; I just never realized I was supposed to have some sort of childhood. It was all about surviving from day one. Your name...." She lets out a slow breath.
"Yeah, I guess I do, really." Shurui stuffs her hands in her pockets. "... I understand completely."
K' waits for the questions-- braces for them, and prepares not to respond to a single one. But Shurui doesn't ask. Instead, she just subsides into a brief silence. She's probably just taking a minute to absorb this information, he thinks to himself. The only reason K' himself doesn't look surprised is because amnesia isn't a foreign concept to him. He's dealt with it so long that finding another amnesiac isn't a spur for either confusion or shock. It's just another person who can't remember their own life.
He lets her talk. It's indicative of a uncharacteristic tolerance, really, that he does this at all; he usually gets impatient with people who talk at him and either shuts them up or walks away. But somehow... he almost wants to hear what she has to say. He wants to know what her experience was like-- if only to compare it with his own.
That doesn't mean he has to look interested or invested. He listens, but it's listlessly. Her declaration that she understands him is simply accepted without comment or response, taken as true without protest or skepticism. His eyes, all this time, had remained closed; now, one of them cracks open. It regards Shurui indifferently. "You find out a way to get memory back," he eventually charges her, "I want to hear it." Hey. It's worth a shot. And K' never was averse to using others to further his own ends; it's when it gets to the point of actual reliance he backs out.
A few moments pass. His direct gaze veils away again, that opened eye shutting again in an attitude of marked weariness. "But in the here and now. I'm tired."
K' has his past. And Shurui intends to allow him the benefit of having that as his secret.
That was part of her promise to him, after all.
".... Now you understand why I have shitty taste in hobbies. But yeah..." Shurui relaxes from her scrunched stance and flops down against a wall, closing her eyes. "If I find a way, you'll be the first to know, K'. I don't know how far that promise can hold, but." Her shoulders loosen in a shrug. "You have my word."
In reality, it's rare that Shurui would be so talkative about her past, but, here, in front of K', she has enough reason to allow those few memories she has to come forth. For one, K'.... actually believes her. Not that she reserved a higher amount of disbelief for the clone, but he seemed to be the last person she has met to take something so seriously. Perhaps, he still is that person; he just knew from experience that it was possible. And he was so intimate with that experience that he seemed to understand that she wasn't lying.
"I had a name like yours, too. Hoodie. That's what everyone on the street called me, because that was one of the things I wore." It's also cathartic, even if she watches the surly clone for any sign of Irritation. She wants him to listen, if only to see if he, somehow, would understand that as well. Maybe....
Maybe she's just looking for Muda everywhere, even in places that don't even remotely remind her of the old man. Even he didn't understand that part of her life, but, in a sense, it was never part of his objective, especially when it came clear that Shurui seemed to, for all intents and purposes, appear from thin air.
"It wasn't the hoodie I had on now. This one... it wasn't even my size. Too big."
It's uncharacteristic of him, but K' lets her talk. And he lets her talk far longer than he would have let just about anyone else talk, just because there's something bleakly familiar about what she has to say. There's no reason for him to disbelieve her, and he knows firsthand that these things do happen to people. Shurui gets her catharsis, and for once K' doesn't break her off.
This doesn't mean he has to be responsive. He doesn't look at her, doesn't even open his eyes. With a muted grunt of repressed pain, he eventually pushes to his feet; folding up his shirt and jacket under his right arm, apparently not keen on trying to put them back on right away. A long exhale, and he tilts a glance down at the girl, shoving his hands in his pockets. His expression, as always, remains painfully unreadable.
"You'd get better results," he eventually sighs, "if you went and told this to Alma." Slowly, he starts making his way out; seemingly determined not to have to stick around any longer than he has to in this hated, sterile setting. "I can understand you... but he can care."
It's painful bluntness at its best. And it probably would have been better if he'd added a 'for you' at the end of his sentence, mitigating the harshness of it all. Yet somehow, it's not really meant cruelly or in a mean-spirited fashion. K' really, honestly-- cannot care. He just isn't wired to care about others in the all-encompassing, wholehearted way that others can. He's too damaged himself to be able to reach out to others or support them in the way they need. He knows that, and he isn't going to try to do what he knows he can't.
It doesn't mean he has to be compassionate. To expect such things out of K' would be unfair. Shurui doesn't know *what* he's been through, except that, in a way, it paralleled her own life, if to an extreme degree. K'.... doesn't seem to have had anyone give him a chance when he most needed it. She *could* see him having a friend- she'd expect it, even- since K' seems to have *something* prodding him around to places like the YFCC.
His words are blunt, but Shurui doesn't wince. In fact, a short ghost of a laugh escapes her lips. "... It's not something I'm in any hurry to solve, actually. I'll find my own answers on my own time, and even if I did find out something, I can't be that person anymore. I'm Shurui. Not Hoodie, not.... whoever I was before that. Besides," she admits, languidly nudging her hand to half-heartedly emphasize her point, "you're helping. Understanding's more valuable to me than sympathy." Eyes close thoughtfully behind those glasses. "You got your own problems, K'. It won't stop me from being here when I want to be, but that's just my fucked up hobby, there." Not K' specifically, but, to be honest, killing time in a way where she can appreciate the moments spent.
"That said." Shurui's head turns upwards to look at K's own. "If you truly find yourself needing something from someone else, I'll try to provide it. Even if it's just something as simple as a place to crash." A shrug shifts her shoulders, and the girl gets up, standing to that diminutive height. It's not as if she's expecting such a favor to be taken. However, like the fact that someone like K', with his faulty memory and seemingly parallel experiences, simply exists, just the fact that the offer is made may provide an incentive for him, whether it be to prove her wrong or be an ass and wake her up at 2 in the morning.
Either way, he'd make life interesting. And that's what she wants.
K' huffs an amused breath at her words. The sound is tinged perceptibly with bitterness. On her own time. She's not in a rush to find anything out. After all, she's her own person now, not... whatever she was before. She's got her own name. She had someone who cared.
Would that K' had had the same. All he's got is a friend. It's not to say he's ungrateful for what he does have... but nonetheless, he can't suppress the jealousy that wells up whenever he runs into someone who has more. And the vast majority of people have more than he does.
He maintains his quiet. He's discomfited now, discomfited at the way she uses his name and tries to reach out to him. He does what he usually does when he finds himself uncomfortable-- when he finds himself presented with seeming friendliness, and can't help but be suspicious of it. He withdraws.
Her offers draw a graver sort of look from him, a lowering of his brows and a slight frown. He doesn't respond-- doesn't seem pleased or affronted. He just considers what she says a moment, offers an indifferent lift of one shoulder-- and then he's out the door, leaving it to her whether to interpret his shrug as acquiescence or rebuff.
Lonely, but well-adjusted. Not as normal as some of the people that come in through these doors, but with NESTS's track record, she excels. Sure, she finds weird 'hobbies'. Sure, she alternates between cussing and apologizing. At least she's something close to sane. Muda wasn't the most loving of guardians, but he instilled in her the idea of hope. And the gentle eventuality of loss.
He never made it seem like he would be there forever for her. Everything was 'when I am gone'. It was certainly a messed up way to deal with a clone, but it allowed the girl the notion of letting go. The notion of moving on. Thus, she's not so bitter about it that she won't allow someone to get near her.
So, while she's lonely now, unlike K', there's hope of her finding another friend, or, perhaps, even a sort of 'family', if she'd only put some effort into things. As it stands, K''s presence manages to encourage that effort because he's the first to connect with her on a level no one else seemed to be able to. Not even Muda, for all that he put his time and effort into it.
Stuffing her hands in pockets, she steps aside when K' decides to move away. No move is made to restrain him, or plead for him to come back; what's been said has been said. Maybe she is a hypocrite, trying to be friendly and reaching out when she complained of K's own boss doing the same thing. Maybe, it's Muda's influence?
"...." Maybe it's more that she's looking at a picture of what she could have been, much the same way Alma looked at her in the same light. Alma saw a shade of his former self in the girl, and here, Shurui carries it on and sees a possibility of her future in K'. Or, perhaps not. Implanted fire aside, he doesn't have the same physical limitations she does.
So she's well-adjusted, in a way. Thus, in a sense, the experiment was a success, all without having to lift a finger. The next one may never find a Muda to imprint upon, but, with better, more powerful, and more successful clones, there needn't be one. There may be a certain irony in this juxposition as well: the one clone who thinks the best of herself, albeit realistically, is the one NESTS, as a whole, would think is the most useless and the most wasted potential in terms of her DNA.
For now, Shurui remains ignorant. With luck, she always will.
Log created on 21:25:10 02/06/2008 by Shurui, and last modified on 18:27:52 02/08/2008.